Optimize PUBG on POTATO PCs

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or much known here as PUBG – is a game which almost everybody is currently hyped on right now. We will not use further hyperbole to express that trend, as we all know that you’re reading this one because you are playing it or having the desire to play it – whether your PC belongs to the PC Master Race, or simply, POTATO PC Monster Race.

Now, the question is – why I experience lags often when playing this game? Even if my system meets the MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS?

LAGS, not LOGS, okay?

There are multiple kinds and instances of LAGS– and the most common involves your PC hardware itself. One of them is called “FPS Drops/Dips” or Frames Per Second drops – this occurs when your PC runs out of resources like no more/insufficient VRAMfor the graphics card, insufficient amount of RAM, or running out of CPU power.

Simply, the permanent solution to resolve lower framerates or drops is to UPGRADE the HARDWARE to a HIGHER ONE. However, we don’t want to shell out money as always just to solve any problems, right?

Next is the one called “server-side lag” – and there are multiple reasons (although we aren’t sure which one applies to PUBG servers) why this occur.

Server Power (Internal processing power)

The servers don’t seem to be able to handle events being passed through them anymore, I have recognized a few points where a call function for a player kill or vehicle destroy have ended with a paused screen and then it jumps passed the event.

Data Flow

Sometimes, servers have to deal with some issues, like packets being lost before they reach the client – the same issue might occur in reverse or vice versa.

Server Demand

Because of the hype for this game, the demand for the game services went up – means the demand for server resources (see number 1) went up and maybe that’s the result why they opted on adding a separate SEA server last time.

Now we know what causes lags in-game, let’s move on to how are we going to deal with them. Note that we can’t do anything regarding the server-side lags, that’s why we’re focusing on the one that we can resolve on our own – the frame drops/dips.

For ultra-budget gaming PCs, like the G4560 + GTX 1050/1050Ti configs we did on our recent build guide, we recommend you to do these settings:

Set all settings to either LOW or VERY LOW, except the AA and Texture to HIGH/ULTRA – you might also want to tweak VIEW DISTANCE according to your preference (I settle with Medium on this case, however)

We assume that you are gaming on 1080p with the specs based on our published build guide – however, this can also apply to others as well. In that case – with these specs and settings used – you can get 60-70 fps on most times (but if you are many on the map, it is expected to dip to 50fps or lower but still playable aside than the occasional server side lags).

“This guide was also posted by someone on the official PUBG forums.”

It actually works like this: “Setting the game’s AA and Texture to High/Ultra will transfer some load to the GPU, thereby giving you extra boost in FPS.”

The game actually uses CPU and RAM power more than GPU, but by applying the settings we specified, it can help lower the CPU usage by giving the GPU a share of the load of the CPU.

Another Guide = might work well for laptop users.

Step 1:

Check the power settings on your computer so they are set to “High Performance” instead of the defaulted “Balanced” or “Power Saving”

You might want to test “-lowmemory” if you got 8gb or less ram (for now, game has memory leak, restart the game after every match)

“-sm4” changes shaders from dx11 to dx10, it does remove some distractive reflections and marks on the screen (scope glares fixed)

“-malloc=system” forces windows to handle the memory allocation

Step 3:

Go to in game settings/graphics

Turn up “Brightness” to your preference to see enough in dark corners etc.

Change “Anti-Aliasing” to “Very Low” (Note: This game uses “FXAA” or something similar. It doesn’t really cost much performance to use however everything gets blurry and might even cause headache! If you want a clearer image there are other options. However, some people don’t like to play with flickering edges. In this case try to play on “High” or “Ultra”)

Change “Texture Quality” to anything (Note: Depends on your graphics card VRAM and personal preference. Some pro’s say it’s harder to see an enemy in high quality textures. Check your fps while changing this setting. Some people might experience higher fps with higher textures right now due to CPU overload. This settings increases quality a lot while not losing much visibility)

Change “Effects Quality” to “Very Low” (Note: If you still want a better looking game without sacrificing visibility a lot then this is one of the settings to change)

Change “Foliage” to “Very Low” (Note: Removes a LOT of bushes/grass)

Disable “Motion Blur”

Reduce your Screen Scale (Note: Depends heavily on your graphics card. Strong cards won’t get a high average in game-fps increase here and should stay at 100 @native resolution to maintain good pixel quality)

If you can’t handle a bad looking game but want to maintain good visibility just increase Texture a lot, Effects a bit and Shadows to “Low”

Step 4: (Advanced, skip if you don’t want to lose any fps)

These settings only improve visibility and might cost few fps, only use them if you want the clearest image possible. Note that I play with very low textures:

Open C:\Users\PC NAME\AppData\Local\TslGame\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor

Change value from “sg.ViewDistanceQuality” to “sg.ViewDistanceQuality=3”

Change value from “ScreenScale” to “ScreenScale=120.000000” (skip if you don’t want to lose 10-12fps average, might be even more depending on your setup but this helps a bit against not having anti-aliasing)

Make the file “read-only” (Note: keep in mind that any settings in-game won’t be saved, just remove it, change your settings and put it back on with all changes)

Add ” -d3d10″ as an additional start option in steam (Note: “-d3d10” includes “-sm4”, removes some shadows for example, you might lose some fps or get weird textures, not recommended)

After that, see if the game runs much better than before. Take note that this game is still on Early Access mode and the purpose of that is to let the devs know what part of the game they need to optimize.

As the game updates and patches deploys, many performance-related problems were addressed – and we think that if this continues, the game will be much better optimized when it leaves Early Access and released in FULL.